Vol. 878 No. 3
1. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the progress made in the roll-out of the green low carbon agri-environment scheme; the number of completed applications likely to be received by the closing date of 22 May 2015; the likely commencement date for the scheme in 2015; the projected spending on the scheme by his Department this year; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18720/15]
As the Minister will admit, as far as he is concerned, GLAS is a flagship scheme. People are anxious to find out how many completed applications have been submitted for the scheme. Now that the Minister has announced GLAS for 2016, farmers are curious to learn the date from which they will be able to participate. What is the effect of the change in the rule to require applicants to obtain 16.3 points to access tier 3? How many completed applications has the Department received as a result of this change?
I thank the Deputy for giving me an opportunity to clarify this issue. GLAS is a large, flagship scheme which has been open for some time and for which the deadline for the receipt of applications is one week from now.
Following successful negotiations with the European Commission, I opened the GLAS online application system on 23 February for the preparation of applications, with the intention of activating the submit facility once formal approval of the rural development programme as a whole had been notified. Approval has since been received in the form of a letter of comfort from the Commission. The submit facility was activated last week and applications can now be formally submitted.
The initial response to GLAS is positive and I am pleased to note that, as of this morning, 29,406 applications had been created on the GLAS online application system. Of this number, more than 20,000 applicants selected actions and are, therefore, well on the way to submitting a completed application. This is a remarkable achievement by all involved, including farmers, planners and the departmental officials working to implement to scheme.
On the basis of progress to date, I anticipate that in the region of 25,000 completed applications will be submitted before the closing date of 22 May. This figure is very much in line with earlier projections. After the closing date, my Department will begin validating, ranking and selecting GLAS applications. As set out in the scheme's terms and conditions, candidates from tier 1 will receive priority access to the scheme, followed by tier 2 and, in turn, tier 3 candidates who undergo a separate selection process, as required under the terms of the approved rural development programme. However, as commonage farmers have until the end of August to submit their completed commonage management plans which are a prerequisite for approval to participate in GLAS, notification of approvals will not take place until after that date. All applicants will be notified in writing of the outcome of their application.
I anticipate that GLAS contracts will commence from 1 October, with estimated expenditure on the scheme of €20 million in 2015. In the case of those who are unable to submit an application before the deadline, as sometimes occurs for good reason, we plan to reopen GLAS for submissions in September. This means, for example, that if we take 25,000-----
The time for the Minister's reply has concluded.
The more information he provides the better.
I am only trying to be helpful.
I am aware of that.
The Minister did not provide the figure I sought. This is not the first time he failed to provide a figure. Last week, only a number of hours after the online facility for submitting applications had opened, he was able to indicate how many had availed of this facility. How many farmers have submitted completed applications? Will the Minister confirm that only approximately 20% of the 14,800 commonage farmers have gone as far as the action stage of the application process? Will he accept that such a figure equates to a low take-up of the scheme? He stated his intention was to attract 30,000 applicants to GLAS this year. He now hopes 25,000 completed applications will be received under the scheme this year, yet he still intends to spend the full allocation of €20 million for the scheme. Will he explain this discrepancy?
It is important that people understand the process. We opened GLAS early in order that planners could get applications onto the system. All of the preparatory work for the scheme takes time. A plan must be put together and planners must work with farmers to ensure they consider all of the options available to them. Planners are involved in GLAS because it is a complex scheme. The farmer and the planner agree a GLAS plan, including for commonage areas. As commonage plans will take a little more time to implement, we have provided that commonage farmers need only indicate that they will commit to a commonage GLAS plan before the deadline of 22 May. Their plans must then be finalised before the end of August.
We have taken a practical approach that has allowed planners, since February, to get on with the job of acquiring all of the information they need to have a full commonage plan. Farmers can now submit their applications online before the closing date of 22 May. The Department anticipates that we will receive approximately 25,000 completed applications by the closing date, whereas the Deputy stated we would not receive 10,000 applications, which reflects his usual pessimism. If the final figure is slightly below 25,000, so be it and if it is slightly more than 25,000, all the better.
Many farmers who are concerned they may not be able to submit an application before the deadline have asked me whether I will reopen GLAS in the autumn. The Department has indicated it will do so to allow farmers to participate in the scheme from 1 January 2016.
Will the Minister answer my simple question by indicating how many farmers have used the online facility to submit a completed application? He stated many times previously that 30,000 farmers would join GLAS, with participants receiving an average payment of €5,000 and those participating in GLAS plus receiving an average payment of €7,000. Is he sticking to his revised estimate that 25,000 farmers will participate in the scheme? Will participants in GLAS and GLAS plus receive average payments of €5,000 and €7,000, respectively?
Can the Minister confirm that this is still what he expects to happen? He gives out about me being pessimistic, but we will see who is nearer to the figure. I never said it would be beneath €15,000.
I think the Deputy said it would be €10,000.
I did not.
Okay. I am happy to be corrected.
The Minister said that all the commonage farmers would join. Currently, 30% of them have gone as far as the action stage.
It is important that we stick to the facts here. I never said the average payment for people in GLAS would be €5,000 and the average payment for people in GLAS plus would be €7,000. They are the maximum payments, as the Deputy knows. Many farmers will be on the maximum. Of course there will be some farmers who will be on less than the maximum. Therefore, the average will be slightly below the maximum.
By how much will it be below the maximum?
We should not try to create something that is based on misleading people. Everybody knows the maximum payment in GLAS is €5,000 and-----
Good.
-----the maximum payment in GLAS plus is €7,000. We want to try to get as many farmers as possible up to those maximums. They have to apply the rules. They get payments for certain actions they do. More than 50% of this is European money. The European Commission will come and audit GLAS to make sure it gets value for money. The scheme we have put together will allow many farmers, if not most farmers, to get close to the maximum. Certainly, the average will be slightly below that. Some farmers will receive GLAS payments of less than €5,000 because they have a lack of land or do not want to choose some of the actions. We still plan to spend €20 million on GLAS this year. We hope to accept a further 10,000 applicants, in addition to the 25,000 applicants in this round, in the application process that will start in September with payments to be made from 1 January. The plan is that by next year, there will be approximately 35,000 farmers in GLAS. Obviously, there is flexibility either side of those numbers.
2. Deputy Martin Ferris asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will confirm that over 2,000 letters were sent to farmers by Teagasc this week, informing them that their applications under the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme will not be processed by the closing date of 22 May 2015; and his plans to deal with the matter. [18718/15]
In recent weeks, there has been a great deal of commentary regarding a letter that Teagasc sent to 2,000 farmers, informing them that their GLAS applications will not be processed by the closing date of 22 May. I would like the Minister to comment on that. If it is the case that there will be such a delay, how does he intend to deal with it?
I am aware that Teagasc has written to some of its clients to advise them that it does not have the capacity to submit their GLAS plans. As this is a matter between Teagasc and its client base, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on it. As a third party, it is not appropriate for me to become involved in matters which are of a contractual nature between the parties involved. The involvement of trained advisers in the preparation of GLAS plans has been central to the implementation of GLAS since its inception. In view of this, the preparation for the roll-out of GLAS involved my Department organising specific training to ensure an adequate number of advisers would be available to prepare and submit applications on behalf of farmers. Following the completion of this training between November 2014 and February 2015, those who attended the training sessions were required to submit approved forms and details of their educational qualifications to the Department. They were separately required to submit completed registration forms and professional indemnity insurance details to the Department before they could be entered on the register of approved advisers. Some 528 people are approved on the register as GLAS advisers. This gives them access to the GLAS online application system to prepare applications for their farmer clients.
While Teagasc has indicated to some of its clients that it cannot submit applications for them at this stage, it is always open to farmers to approach another adviser. I can understand why that would not be the preference for many farmers who are working with Teagasc. I have announced that a second tranche of GLAS applications will open in the autumn. Any farmers who are unable to apply in the current tranche for whatever reason, for example, it might be taking too long to put the plan in place, will have an opportunity to apply in this second tranche. I ask farmers to understand that it is not such a big deal if they cannot meet the 22 May deadline because GLAS will be opening again three and a half or four months from now. The whole point of our current approach is to accept a tranche of applications now so that we have some time to deal with plans and applications. We will reopen the scheme to applications in September so that the next round of farmers can come in from January. Teagasc will have to work with those deadlines.
I thank the Minister for his clarification. It will not escape me or anybody else that a number of planners, including a Monaghan man and a Mr. McQuinn from my own county, are quoted this week in the Irish Farmers' Journal and the farming section of the Irish Independent as saying they believe there is a massive shortage of planners to assist those who are trying to get their applications in. Thousands of people have had to change their applications for various reasons. The planners are concerned that there will be such a surge of online applications between now and 22 May that it could cause the system to collapse. We are aware of Teagasc's position and we know the planners are now saying something similar. It all suggests that the number of applications coming through in advance of the 22 May deadline cannot be realised. I appreciate that a second tranche of applications will be accepted later in the year.
I remind the Deputy that the 22 May deadline already represents an extension of three weeks on what the original date was planned to be. We have already provided some extra space. We do not necessarily have a principled reason for not extending the deadline. I am going to be under a great deal of pressure from the Opposition to make sure we get the GLAS payments out this year. The sooner we get the applications in, the sooner we can process them and the sooner we can start paying. We anticipate that we can get in approximately 25,000 applications in the first round. That would actually be a pretty good result. Farmers who do not manage to get in under the first tranche, for various reasons, will be able to get accepted anyway in September and will essentially start their payments from 1 January 2016, as opposed to 1 October 2015. That is a gap of just three months. When there are 30,000 people wanting to get into a scheme, there will always be people at the deadline who are not quite ready and there will always be planners who would like a little more time. If I were to push this back by another week, I guarantee the Deputy that we would have the same thing at the end of the week after 22 May. The problem is that we would have a week less to assess all of these applications and to get payments out. I am really anxious to ensure we stick to the original timeframe I have been setting out for the last 18 months, or certainly the last 12 months. All of our timescales are drawn up with the aim of getting payments out in the last three months of this year in mind.
I understand the Minister's position on sticking to the deadline so that the processing criteria are adhered to. Some planners have had to withdraw a sizeable number of applications as a result of the change in the criteria. I have to say the Department's decision to issue a booklet setting out the criteria was a very welcome development. In many instances, it has helped people to focus on what is and what is not available. I take it from what the Minister has said that he is ruling out an extension. As we get closer to the date, perhaps he will revisit that by providing for an extension of a week or a fortnight to get this over the hill.
People need to understand a very important consideration here. We set 22 May as a deadline because it is a week before people's basic payment applications have to be in.
I know that.
Farmers will refer to them as their single farm payment applications. The deadline for applications under the basic payment scheme, as it is now called, is 29 May, which is a week later than the deadline under this scheme. We do not want the same closing date for both GLAS and the basic payment. That would really drive planners over the edge because they would have to try to do everything at the same time. We have tried to stagger these deadlines by leaving a week between the two. We want to get all the GLAS applications in before all the final basic payment applications come in the following week. If we pushed the GLAS deadline back by a week, we would push it on top of the basic payment deadline. In such circumstances, I would have to put that back by a week as well.
This is putting even more pressure on the Department to get basic payments out as early as we can in October. I am trying to ensure the vast majority of farmers get payments as early as they can. We will reopen GLAS in September so people who for whatever reason, such as not accessing planners, planners having difficulties or problems with eligibility, will have a bit more time to do it and will be able to enter the scheme in September. I want to give the signal we do not plan to extend the deadlines for either the basic payment or GLAS at this stage.
3. Deputy Thomas Pringle asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will consider the abolition of the sub-segmentation of tonnage and kilowatts to allow for improvements in safety at sea and better quality of fish landings in the pelagic sector; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18717/15]
This question is on the sub-segmentation of tonnage and kilowatts in the fishing industry and the potential to improve safety and the quality of fish landings in the small pelagic sector if there were a change in policy to allow them upgrade their vessels.
It is great to see a fishing question among Priority Questions. The Irish fishing fleet is divided into five segments in accordance with ministerial policy directive 2 of 2003, as amended. The segments are the refrigerated seawater, RSW, pelagic segment which people from Donegal know very well, the polyvalent segment; the beam trawler segment, the specific segment and the aquaculture segment.
In addition, the policy sets out a number of sub-segments of the fleet, including a sub-segment for vessels exclusively using pots, vessels targeting scallops and polyvalent vessels under 18 m in length. The transfer of capacity between the segments and sub-segments is not permitted, and equivalent replacement capacity must be taken out of the segment or sub-segment into which a vessel is being introduced.
For vessels to qualify for either a mackerel and-or herring authorisation, vessels must be licensed with 100% capacity having the required track record as stipulated under the individual mackerel and herring fleet policies.
Fishing capacity is privately owned and is traded commercially, bought and sold independently of the Department and the licensing authority.
A change in licensing policy involving the removal or amalgamation of segments or sub-segments would have a substantial impact on the Irish fishing fleet. The current fleet policy allows operators to introduce new or replacement vessels and to modify existing vessels subject to the operator providing replacement capacity from the relevant segment and sub-segment. The current policy has been put in place over many years and a change, as requested, would impact many elements of the fishing fleet and would require much consultation. It could potentially have significant impacts on access to fishing resources and the management of quotas.
Where the industry, through the recognised representative structure of producer organisations, makes a business case for changes to the licensing policy on the basis of changed circumstance, I would examine any such case. Any amendments to licensing policy that I propose to bring forward will be subject to a public consultation with stakeholders. The Deputy is perhaps speaking about safety tonnage which is not provided for under the new Common Fisheries Policy. If he has specific questions I will try to answer them.
The issue is not increasing capacity or quotas. The vessel owners concerned already have quota allocations and they are not looking for an increase. This is about allowing some of the vessels the ability to go to sea in less favourable weather and enabling them to catch and land better quality fish, which would have an impact on earning capacity.
Will the Minister outline what impact it could have? Is he willing to enter a consultation process on it? Why must it come through the producer organisations? What is the basis for this? A number of vessel owners have requested the Department examine this also.
We try to have ongoing consultation between the Department, the Minister and the industry. It would be very difficult to do this with individual vessel owners because there are so many competing interests in the fishing industry. This is why it is always very difficult to manage politically. If something is given to one boat another boat will lose because this is a finite resource. The gross tonnage and engine power kilowatt figures are as they are for our entire fleet. For many years as part of the Common Fisheries Policy countries have been required to stay within these limits, so the capacity of their fleet to catch fish does not increase and their quota is limited on an annual basis. The Commission's fear is if boat owners state they will not catch any more fish but want to put in a more powerful engine to make the boat safer it would create increased power capacity to tow larger nets which would create the capacity to catch more fish which is a concern for the Commission. It is trying to insist we match the catching capacity from a power, size and tonnage point of view with the appropriate amount of fish a country should be catching for sustainable catches. The case has been made to me by many owners that if they must steam for long distances this has implications for safety.
I know there is a trade-off and a balance must be struck, but this proposal would not increase capacity because capacity is already there with regard to tonnage and kilowatts in the national fleet. It is a question of how it is used to maximise quality and safety at sea. The Minister has placed much emphasis on safety, and rightly so, but this could and would improve safety for those fishermen already fishing, who have a quota and are not looking to increase it through this measure. I understand the Commission is concerned that a more powerful engine might lead to demand for an additional quota, but everybody knows it will not be available. This is about boats being able to catch and land good quality fish to maximise their income. With a finite quota it is vital for the sustainability of their businesses that they can maximise their income. There have been instances where boats, because of their size and the weather conditions this year, have only recently completed their mackerel quota. The weather did not allow them to get out when the fish were right beside them. They had to steam further to get them. These issues could be addressed with balance, improving safety and earnings without impacting on quota or capacity of the overall fleet.
It would impact on the gross tonnage and engine power kilowatt issue. I am happy to listen to new ideas and new approaches if it can be done within the confines of the Common Fisheries Policy. I tell farming organisations if we can do things better within the rules they should speak to me about it and we will happily look at it. We are also trying to do this with the inshore fleet at present. Many new initiatives are coming from the new regional forums on supporting the inshore fishing fleet. I suggest this is done through the producer organisations, but if suggestions are made outside of them by all means send them in and I will look at them. I do not want to create an expectation we can go down the road of safety tonnage, which is what was proposed in the past, because safety tonnage is specifically not facilitated in the new Common Fisheries Policy. There are many smart people in the fishing industry who know the rules and parameters because they are frustrated by them a lot of the time. If there are proposals whereby we can make sensible changes that do not involve increasing overall capacity or gross tonnage let me see them. We would certainly look at them and either respond to them or explain why we cannot do so.
4. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the progress made in discussions with the European Union on achieving a reduction in the fine imposed on Ireland over claims on the land parcel identification system; the amount of the fine imposed on Ireland by the European Union; when this matter will be brought to a conclusion; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18721/15]
A fine, or as it is called in the jargon a flat rate financial correction for Ireland which is a fine by any other name, of €181.5 million was imposed on Ireland by the European Union over the land parcel identification system, which was totally disproportionate, ridiculous and outrageous. The Minister has been in negotiations. When will we have the white smoke and good news that it has been reduced, as it should be, to nothing?
The Deputy was a Minister and knows well it will not be reduced to nothing because there is an issue. We are in negotiations on it. The EU has not imposed the fine, it has made a claim this is what should be paid. To be clear, we have not paid anything yet.
The Deputy will be aware that the EU Commission, in its letter dated 14 May 2014, proposed a 2% flat rate financial correction for Ireland of €181.5 million arising from its conformity clearance audits in 2009, 2010 and 2012. The payments audited covered the period from 2008 to 2012, inclusive, during which over €9 billion was paid to farmers in Ireland under the direct payment schemes. I have always been opposed to the imposition of a flat-rate penalty, particularly in this case. I have strongly refuted the application of this proposed correction as disproportionate to the true level of risk involved and my Department accordingly sought a hearing with the conciliation body at European level.
The conciliation body met the Commission and officials from my Department on 9 December and 10 December, respectively. The Commission held its position on the 2% flat rate correction before and during its meeting and advised that it was still reviewing the information received from my Department in advance of the hearing. During their meeting, officials from my Department outlined Ireland's fundamental objection to the flat-rate correction and argued that the risk to the fund should be a calculated amount. My officials informed the conciliation body regarding the amount of work undertaken by my Department to identify and remove all ineligible features from the land parcel identification system, LPIS, database, the technical improvement in the LPIS system and the time and resources used by my Department to address all issues raised by the Commission. The conciliation body acknowledged the amount of work done by my Department in the calculation of the risk and stated that it was of the opinion that the issue hinged on only a few, though important, elements of the calculations.
The report of the conciliation body concluded that conciliation seemed within reach and that the Commission and my Department should continue discussing the matter with a view to an agreed settlement. On foot of this advice, my Department has maintained regular contact with the Commission with a view to bringing the matter to a conclusion. Further work has recently been carried out to quantify the level of risk to EU funds and this information is currently with the Commission for consideration and will be the subject of a Commission visit shortly. It is expected that the matter will be concluded in the near future.
Can the Minister tell me how much was clawed back from farmers as a result of the LPIS review for the five years, 2008 to 2012, inclusive? It is actually up to 2013. In other words, how much money was overpaid?
Has the Minister any idea how soon this matter will come to a close? My understanding, in simple English, is that this fine or financial correction - call it what one wishes - will come out of the Department's budget and if the Commission wants €100 million or, as it wants at present, €181 million, that will come out of the Department's budget and would have to repaid that way. Could the Minister confirm that such is the position, how much money was clawed back from farmers or how much were farmers overpaid having gone through the LPIS, and how many outstanding cases are there?
First, that was not the question Deputy Ó Cuív asked in writing and I do not have all those numbers, but I can certainly share some of them with him.
They used to prepare supplementaries for all eventualities.
I thank farming organisations and the Opposition spokesperson for being reasonable on this issue. This is an issue we cannot ignore. If one gets a €181 million proposed fine from the Commission, one cannot simply put one's head in the sand and say that we refuse to pay.
We have gone through a tortuous process of assessing 900,000 land parcels across Ireland to ascertain what the appropriate level of reimbursement to the Commission should be. I refer to what was the level of overpayment over a five-year period. The issue is not so much whether that was by mistake or whether it was deliberate. The Commission looks at this from an audit perspective and asks what public money was spent that should not have been spent because it did not quality, how much should it get back and what fines should be imposed to go with that.
Our calculations are that this figure should be approximately €50 million. We will have to look at how that gets paid. Some of it will be paid back by farmers and some may well be paid by the Department over a period of time. We first need to conclude with the Commission what is the figure. The Commission strongly disagrees with that figure because otherwise it would not be asking for €181 million. We have a credible case here and we have worked hard to make it. I would be hopeful that we will reach a conclusion on it in the next month to six weeks. That is a guesstimate but I would be hopeful that it would be done within that timeframe.
I ask Deputies and Ministers to look at the clock because if we go over time on these questions, Other Questions for backbenchers will not be reached.
Will the Minister send me the figures of how much he will through this process have sought to reclaim from farmers and then give me some estimate of the outstanding cases that still have not been resolved because it is important that we understand that? In measuring what Europe is claiming to do, it gives us an understanding of the measure of how much this was a finicky exercise, which in most cases it was.
The Minister lost €200 million in terms of underpsend in his first year in Government. With this €181 million over our heads at present, we have a significant superlevy taken out of farmers' pockets. It is running to hundreds of millions of euro. Has the Minister any idea when this matter will be brought to a conclusion and when we will have some certainty as to how much money is being taken out of farmers' pockets?
The superlevy is not hundreds of millions of euro.
As to whether it is taken from the Department or taken directly from the farmers, if taken out of the Department it is indirectly taken off the farmers as well. Perhaps the Minister could give us some indication.
I wish Deputy Ó Cuív would not try to paint a difficult issue into something that it is not. This is not connected with the superlevy. The superlevy is not hundreds of millions of euro either-----
I never said that.
-----and farmers have the option to repay the superlevy over a three-year period in interest-free instalments. By and large, farmers understand that.
This is a separate issue. It is an issue we cannot avoid. It is an issue of public money being spent on land, some of which was not eligible. It is a relatively small amount. In percentage terms, it is a small percentage of farmers who are involved, but obviously, for those farmers, it is a big issue.
I cannot send Deputy Ó Cuív the figures on what portion of the end figure farmers will pay until we know what the end figure is and until we make decisions around penalties, etc., but what I can send him is the amount of money that farmers have been asked to pay already. Where farmers have a small amount to repay, we have taken that from their single farm payment to get those farmers out of the problem area, which is what they wanted - we spoke to farming organisations about this. There is a relatively small percentage of farmers who have an issue here and we will try to deal with them in a way that manages cash flow and that certainly does not put farmers out of business.
5. Deputy Martin Ferris asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will consider the allocation of €25 million over five years, under the rural development programme targeted agricultural scheme, for the poultry sector to aid energy efficiency; if he will implement a system for dispensing medication, and for other supports, to the poultry industry. [18719/15]
Would the Minister consider allocating €25 million over five years, that is, at €5 million a year, under the rural development targeted agricultural scheme for the poultry sector which is the poor relation when it comes to the wider agricultural schemes, and also in light of the type of farming sector concerned, with its contribution to local economies because it is family orientated?
I thank Deputy Ferris. I met representatives from the poultry sector recently and they make a strong case. The rural development programme, RDP, for the period 2014-20 was submitted to the EU Commission for approval in July 2014. The programme includes provision for a new targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS II. Under TAMS II, there will be a dedicated scheme for investment in the pig and poultry sectors, focusing in the case of poultry operations on a range of energy and water efficiency measures. This will include a system for dispensing medication. The standard rate of aid under this scheme will be 40%, but the investment items will also be available for selection under the young farmers' capital investment scheme, where a rate of 60% will apply.
The total allocation for TAMS II in the 2014-20 RDP is €395 million.
As a tranche system will be in place for each scheme and farmers have three years to complete the investment works concerned, very limited funding will be required in 2015 to ensure that the schemes can be opened. Now that the required letter of comfort has been received from the Commission, we are in a position to start the roll-out of the various TAMS schemes. The first scheme to be launched will be the young farmer scheme, including poultry elements, followed by dairy equipment, low emission slurry spreaders and organic capital investments. The remaining schemes, including the general pig and poultry measure, will be launched later in the summer and I will announce the relevant allocation at that stage.
I have told the poultry industry that we need to try to calculate how much money we have for TAMS II and when it is likely to be drawn down. That will determine how much money I can commit to the pigs and poultry sector. We have committed to a scheme for pigs and poultry. The question is whether we confine it to heating, ventilation, lighting systems and energy management or whether it will be something more substantial to allow for expansion of the sector. This is an ongoing discussion. I suspect the scheme will be launched before the end of July.
Approximately 800 people are involved in the poultry sector, at least 800 poultry farmers in the Irish Republic. These are all family farms run by family farmers and they are reasonably sized enterprises. They contribute significantly to their local economy and their value to local economies should not be under-estimated. The Minister has been in consultation with the poultry farmers and along with the IFA they would like to see a ring-fenced funding of €25 million over five years not for extending developments but to fund safer and energy-efficient use, improved systems for dispensing medication and for bio-security. Those are the areas they wish to have funded. It is essential for the survival of that type of enterprise that funding be made available and €5 million per annum would be money well spent and would provide good value.
I agree with the Deputy. We will make money available but I cannot give a figure today as to how much that will be. A scheme for pigs and poultry will be launched towards the end of July. The only question is how much will we have available to spend. The items outlined by the Deputy will be covered. Whether there will be a more extensive scheme for the pig sector in particular, where there is ambition for expansion, will be dependent on whether we believe we have enough money in the overall envelope of nearly €400 million, or €395 million to be exact.
I wish to reassure poultry farmers who have raised these issues with the Deputy that there will be a scheme for them which I suspect will be open by mid-summer but I cannot give an exact figure today as to how much will be provided under that scheme. I will be able to do so in due course.
It is encouraging that the Minister plans to open the scheme in mid-July. He indicates that he will look favourably on the suggestions from the industry as well as from the farming organisations. I stress that as the Minister is aware, this sector is very community orientated. The value of the sector and the employment it creates goes back into the local communities. It is a different type of farming. I welcome that the Minister is going to open the scheme in July and that he has indicated he will try to ensure that the funding of €25 million will be ring-fenced.
I have a lot of time for the pigs and poultry sector, a sector which does not get the benefit of single farm payment nor the benefits of most of the rural development programmes although we are trying to change that, in particular with regard to slurry management. We want to be helpful to the sector and the only question is how much we can afford to spend. There are competing demands. If I spend more on this scheme I will need to spend less on something else. It is a case of trying to measure how we can get best value for money from that TAMS II programme. We are trying to spread what is a lot of money across quite a large number of areas, from dairy expansion to pigs and poultry to beef and sheep handling, to farm safety, to young farmers, to the organic sector and so on. The money needs to be divided among all those sectors. I agree with the Deputy's request which I regard as a very reasonable request by the poultry sector to update and modernise its housing from an energy management point of view but it will be necessary to wait for the details of the scheme which will be launched in a few months time.
